Messages - Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Apparently, rather than trying to get people to be decent to each other and stop fucking their own habitat up, social justice advocates actually hate all humanity and have no hope for the future whatsoever, is what I'm getting out of this.

That, and also the big glaring question of why an abusive, manipulative pathological liar known primarily for his remarkable ability to carry a grudge over shit he imagined has mod powers on this forum, which at one point in time was great due to its focus on critical thinking.

Although, what do I know, I'm just the asshole over here who clearly doesn't value our species, because all I'm doing to save it is devoting my life and career to biomedicine in an effort to figure out how to solve some of our self-created problems so we can keep going for long enough to not fucking accidentally murder ourselves off.

Semi-nihilistic whinging aside, am I the only one who gets tired of the whole trope of "humans are the real monsters" thing in sci-fi? Like, I get that were shitty, but it seems premature to assume we're the shittiest thing to come out of the universe. I mean we evolved this way, why wouldn't we assume some other species would evolve down a similar path due to similar evolutionary pressures and be just as rapey and murdery and dicks as we are? Hell, what if we're not even that bad, all things considered? Who's to say the Orks from Warhammer 40 aren't on the other side of the Galaxy, being more war-like than could possibly be, on our worst day?

Odds seem pretty high that the universe is full of assholes pretty much just like us. However, we aren't done evolving because evolution is an ongoing process, and presumably there are also people out there of various species who have evolved through the kinds of pressures that come from being a very successful species, such as the population and conflict crunch we have managed to put ourselves into, and come out better for it in the end, as I hope that we will also.

My company has essentially exactly the oppposite policy. You can see how this works out with regards to my co-worker.

My co-worker has done insane amounts of overtime. In April, she took maybe 3 days off in total. She's done 24 hour shifts, 12 nights of shifts without a break. All voluntarily, but she's done a lot for the company. Last year, she was practically running the building throughout the summer, on her own.

In return, she asked for two things. 1, to move on site, as the option is available to nightworkers. 2, she went for a job opening which would see her promoted to senior (my staff level).

She was told "hahaha, no. Maybe next year" and she was passed over for the senior position by someone who is an old friend of the head of department. So you know what she does now? Exactly what is required by her job, and nothing more. She has, like me, learned that there is no benefit to sticking your neck out for this company. The overtime pay isn't even really that great, and accounting often mess it up, requiring more work to resolve it. In return, you're taken for granted. She's not motivated to try any harder than she needs to here any more, and if she needs money she'd rather pick up part-time work elsewhere than cover shifts here.

This sounds like a person who should be getting paid a lot more money somewhere else.

We could build an enormous colony ship, say it's meant to colonize Mars and turn it into a Libertarian wonderland where no one has to vaccinate anything, the government only exists to make sure everyone is a good Christian, and cucks won't be allowed.

this is why i'm sincerely hoping we colonize a planet in my lifetime. It's the only semi-possible escape i can see from this madness.

If we can't get our shit together here, we won't be able to get our shit together anywhere else, either. I'm not sure what that would accomplish besides fucking up more planets (which aren't really even ours to fuck up in the first place).

I shadowed an MD today! It was super super super fun, like basically being a doctor is the customer service end of science. So fascinating, and so many different things going on! Doctoring might be the perfect profession for people who have ADHD but also really like science. And yesterday I actually got my advisor into the lab to show her the issues with the tissue I was supposed to be using for validation, and when I walked her through the process and showed her the tissue she agreed with me, which is GREAT because now I can put my time and energy into something that will actually move the project forward.

The thing that's driving me crazy is that she's an excellent teacher, as well as a very very intelligent researcher with a proven track record. I think she just really can't or doesn't want to put in the time to train her graduate students. She has an R1 grant FFS, she has to step up. I don't think she even read my email explaining the problem.